Three new judges appointed in B.C., two senior judges reappointed

One of three new judges appointed to the Provincial Court of B.C. will be heading to Penticton’s courtrooms. The remaining two will head to Kelowna and Kamloops.
File photo

Three new judges have been appointed by the Provincial Court of B.C., and two senior judges have been reappointed.

Judge Wilfred Klinger and Judge William Gordon MacDonald will both sit throughout the province as senior judges, both appointed on one-year terms.

Klinger and MacDonald were initially appointed as judges in 1979 and 1982 respectively, and both were appointed as senior judges in 2009.

Two of the new judges are heading to the Okanagan, including one to Penticton’s courthouse and another to Kelowna’s, while the other new judge will be going to Kamloops’s court.

Judge Monica McParland, heading to Kelowna’s chambers, is set to be sworn in on Aug. 28. McParland earned a cum laude in her Bachelor of Law at the University of Ottawa in 1998.

She has represented both the federal and provincial Crown, and joined Pushor Mitchell LLP in Kelowna, initially tackling drug prosecutions for the federal Crown. In 2014, she shifted to family law.

Judge Michelle Daneliuk, who will sit in Penticton Law Court chambers, is scheduled to be sworn in on Sep. 6. She received her Bachelor of Law from the University of Alberta and worked as a criminal defence lawyer in Edmonton for 10 years before moving to Victoria in 2005.

There, she established an office as a sole practitioner in criminal law, which has primarily consisted of large cases involving multiple defendants, according to the Provincial Court of B.C.

Daneliuk will be filling a vacancy opened up by senior Judge Gale Sinclair, who is expected to work intermittently into early 2018.

In its announcement, the Provincial Court also introduced a new Judge Mariane Ruth Armstrong, heading to Kamloops after being sworn in on Sep. 6.

Armstrong received her Bachelor of Law at Dalhousie University, working as Crown counsel out of Salmon Arm and Vernon from 1989 to 2005 and 2006 to present.

She is currently serving as administrative Crown counsel for Salmon Arm.